Lon's Fort

we find ourselves by looking out at what looks back

Lon’s Fort always seems to sit, not only at the absolute centre of its surrounding geography in the limestone mountains of North Clare, but also, somehow at the centre of time itself, as if holding a physical conversation between the land itself before any human settlement; the long generations who lived within its walls and worked amongst its fields and pastures, and then, as a gathering place, for all its future visitors, including ourselves, passing by on our equally brief journey through life.

Photo: © David Whyte

LON'S FORT

is round and looks
on every other roundness
of the world
as if to stand here
is to stand
at the center
of circle
after growing circle
and reach
in the mind
for a far circumference 
that holds as focus 
an interior so far in
so concentrated
with origin
we find ourselves 
by looking out
at what looks back:
the lighted edge 
of rock and sky,
the sweet 
unmoving darkness
over the horizon
that makes 
a perfect
beckoning symmetry
to the night
beneath our feet,
the underground
where light cannot live
but whose darkness 
makes a ground 
on which to stand,
the central
ancestral story
of those who
lived here
looking out
at the same 
horizon
and the same
surrounding
ground
who saw a world
that witnessed them
at a privileged 
center,
their lives caught
like ours
in the glance
of what lies beyond
only 
for 
a fleeting 
moment.

   -from Pilgrim